Log Horizon: Elder Tale World Theories and Speculation [Absolutely NO SPOILER]

[Tenzen12]

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

No. If you add in future spoilers, at that point, it ceases to be "speculation". The thrill of speculation is in NOT knowing whether you or anyone else is right.
You can have everyone being wrong about all the theories but it can still be a productive speculation thread.

There is nothing productive in discussion where everyone is wrong. Goal of debate is always make conclussion and if possible correct one and theories it involve are either to be proven or dismissed. This no spoiler policy actualy hinder that effort and is ultimately contraproductive.

Of course we can rename this thread to Meaningless chatting about Elder Tale world and than it would be place perfectly fitting for empty gibberish.

[Moridin]

Some of you think that Elder Tales is a:

1: Paralell world

2: A Game

Well, I believe it is both.

Sometime ago, in Shiroe's real world, when the programers of Elder Tale first started their world they created an actual universe. Much like our big bang, it all sprang into existance in the tiniest fraction of time, out of nothing. The programmers updated and patched the world in its alpha stages, and those things affected Elder Tales. At the same time, much like in our MMORPGs, the devs could see in their database that Elder Tales was working and that the entities within in it were behaving acording to how they had been programmed.

Lets now asume that the programmers of Elder Tale were real geniuses, capable of creating a perfect selflearning and adapting AI for the world. This is not farfetched, game devs in our world frequently have this as a goal, but have to scrap it since advanced AI like Artificial Neural Nets are large and having one instance of such an AI per entity in a game is simply impossible right now.

In the alpha and beta stages of Elder Tales none of the entities behaved strange. However, each time an NPC interacted with an Adventurer the NPC gained some input out of that interaction and its AI learned. Soon the AI of some NPC had learned enough to change their reasoning. It was only a matter of time before the AI of some of the NPCs started doing more than its basic routines. Soon one of them became selfaware. When that stage had been reached, that NPC would "infect" the others by simply interacting with them. One of the selfaware NPCs used a powerfull spell that pulled all the Adventurers into Elder Tale and trapped them there, physically. The programmers of Elder Tale had made magic real inside their universe, and thus the NPC mages of Elder Tale needed only to find, or invent, the proper spell to do this.

If the programmers would look inside Elder Tale's database now they would see that the game is active, the NPC have more complex AI then what the programmers gave them, and players would be running around. Possibly the Players would have an expanded memory space assigned to them. If someone would go and look at Shiroes gaming rig, they would not find him there anymore.

This is not all that different from the "Universe within a universe" idea, much like what is depicted at the end of "Men In Black". With two exception:

1. The smaller universe has not randomly come into existance inside the larger universe, instead it was created by programmers.

2. The smaller universe's laws permits magic, and it can therefore affect the larger universe.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Originally Posted by Xacual

That goes against what we know of the game. We know that's it's a 20 year old game. The timing would mean the development would have started 29 years ago which would be around 1989 our years. No one was developing or even thinking about developing MMO type games that far back.

The game was originally from America, not Japan- that's why I suggested it came later. Who knows what the early versions of the game was like.

[Tenzen12]

Originally Posted by Moridin

Some of you think that Elder Tales is a:

1: Paralell world

2: A Game

Well, I believe it is both.

Sometime ago, in Shiroe's real world, when the programers of Elder Tale first started their world they created an actual universe. Much like our big bang, it all sprang into existance in the tiniest fraction of time, out of nothing. The programmers updated and patched the world in its alpha stages, and those things affected Elder Tales. At the same time, much like in our MMORPGs, the devs could see in their database that Elder Tales was working and that the entities within in it were behaving acording to how they had been programmed.

Lets now asume that the programmers of Elder Tale were real geniuses, capable of creating a perfect selflearning and adapting AI for the world. This is not farfetched, game devs in our world frequently have this as a goal, but have to scrap it since advanced AI like Artificial Neural Nets are large and having one instance of such an AI per entity in a game is simply impossible right now.

In the alpha and beta stages of Elder Tales none of the entities behaved strange. However, each time an NPC interacted with an Adventurer the NPC gained some input out of that interaction and its AI learned. Soon the AI of some NPC had learned enough to change their reasoning. It was only a matter of time before the AI of some of the NPCs started doing more than its basic routines. Soon one of them became selfaware. When that stage had been reached, that NPC would "infect" the others by simply interacting with them. One of the selfaware NPCs used a powerfull spell that pulled all the Adventurers into Elder Tale and trapped them there, physically. The programmers of Elder Tale had made magic real inside their universe, and thus the NPC mages of Elder Tale needed only to find, or invent, the proper spell to do this.

If the programmers would look inside Elder Tale's database now they would see that the game is active, the NPC have more complex AI then what the programmers gave them, and players would be running around. Possibly the Players would have an expanded memory space assigned to them. If someone would go and look at Shiroes gaming rig, they would not find him there anymore.

This is not all that different from the "Universe within a universe" idea, much like what is depicted at the end of "Men In Black". With two exception:

1. The smaller universe has not randomly come into existance inside the larger universe, instead it was created by programmers.

2. The smaller universe's laws permits magic, and it can therefore affect the larger universe.

There many stories where fiction was universe on it's own. Like before mentined Never Ending Story, or for example Ink Hearth, and Jumanji. And it didn't need even computers.

This theory is perfectly valid even without actualy depending on programmers that makes thousands of selfaware AI (which is in current settings highly inplasauble.)

[FRS]

Originally Posted by Xacual

That goes against what we know of the game. We know that's it's a 20 year old game. The timing would mean the development would have started 29 years ago which would be around 1989 our years. No one was developing or even thinking about developing MMO type games that far back.

Point of order:

- Meridian 59 was published in 1996
- Ultima Online was first published in 1997
- Everquest was out in 1999.

And you still have peoples on UO and Everquest servers.

[Xacual]

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

The game was originally from America, not Japan- that's why I suggested it came later. Who knows what the early versions of the game was like.

Even if it did come later, it wasn't that much later and that has nothing to do with my point, no one was developing or thinking about MMO games in 1989 which is what the timing of the first World Fraction and stuff would coincide with.

Originally Posted by FRS

Point of order:

- Meridian 59 was published in 1996
- Ultima Online was first published in 1997
- Everquest was out in 1999.

And you still have peoples on UO and Everquest servers.

I'm not sure how these have to do with what I said, none of these had their development started at the end of the 80s.

[Moridin]

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

This theory is perfectly valid even without actualy depending on programmers that makes thousands of selfaware AI (which is in current settings highly inplasauble.)

Actually it is not highly implausible, at the rate of which computer memory increase in size, it could be simple around 2020ish. Elder Tale could have started with poor AI back in 1998, and then closer to 2018 there could have been a patch.

I have seen about a hundred simulated flying things flying towards their target, and about 20 simulated cars driving around a race track. Both the fliers and cars were controlled by small sets of Artificial Neural Nets (ANN) and both groups had thaught themselfs everything. The simulations only contained rules for physics and such, and what was considered the "goal". This was years ago.
I have made a program that learns to play Tic Tac Toe. Its ANN contained less than 100 neurons and I used to run about a thousand of those simultaneously. Again, this was years ago.

If you had a sufficiently large group of ANNs, with the same amount of Neurons as a human brain, enough training and the same sets of input as a human brain, there would exist one that have the same exact thought (yes, Thought) as you do when you are both exposed to the same stimulus.

Somewhere between these two extremes you would get an ANN that would be selfaware.

[Moridin]

Originally Posted by Xacual

Even if it did come later, it wasn't that much later and that has nothing to do with my point, no one was developing or thinking about MMO games in 1989 which is what the timing of the first World Fraction and stuff would coincide with.



I'm not sure how these have to do with what I said, none of these had their development started at the end of the 80s.

In simulations, it is not unheard of to alter the rate of the simulation.

Lets say that the development of Elder Tales was started in 1996, as everquest. In the initial stages, things were simulated not with an 12 times speed increase, as it is when Shiroe play it, but with a factor of 100 instead. The history of Elder Tales would look the same, but Shiroes deduction would be wrong.

Depending on the speed factor, and how long it was used, the development of Elder tales could have started anywhere between the summer of 1998 and the year 1989.

[Tenzen12]

Originally Posted by Moridin

Actually it is not highly implausible, at the rate of which computer memory increase in size, it could be simple around 2020ish. Elder Tale could have started with poor AI back in 1998, and then closer to 2018 there could have been a patch.

I have seen about a hundred simulated flying things flying towards their target, and about 20 simulated cars driving around a race track. Both the fliers and cars were controlled by small sets of Artificial Neural Nets (ANN) and both groups had thaught themselfs everything. The simulations only contained rules for physics and such, and what was considered the "goal". This was years ago.
I have made a program that learns to play Tic Tac Toe. Its ANN contained less than 100 neurons and I used to run about a thousand of those simultaneously. Again, this was years ago.

If you had a sufficiently large group of ANNs, with the same amount of Neurons as a human brain, enough training and the same sets of input as a human brain, there would exist one that have the same exact thought (yes, Thought) as you do when you are both exposed to the same stimulus.

Somewhere between these two extremes you would get an ANN that would be selfaware.

And human brain contain around 100 billions neurons and we talking likely about millions landers in whole world. And let's not forget our technologies are on limmits in metter of miniaturisation so unless some completely new technologies are involved...

Another metter is People of Land act EXACTLY like humans with own culture and unique temperaments. Which is far more difficult to mimic so it could withstand thourough examination (Yeah I know about these AI telephone calls experiment, but that work only if person in question isn't realy invested in that)

[NorthernFallout]

I personally believe that the devs achieved their objective, but instead of an addition to the game in the form of an expansion, it created an alternate reality by toying with powers beyond their understanding.

[erneiz_hyde]

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

There is nothing productive in discussion where everyone is wrong. Goal of debate is always make conclussion and if possible correct one and theories it involve are either to be proven or dismissed. This no spoiler policy actualy hinder that effort and is ultimately contraproductive.

And this is NOT a debate thread. This is speculation thread. For the anime-only viewer, the end goal is NOT to produce a correct conclusion. The goal is the discussion itself, as more and more facts become alight as more episodes unfolds. Sure theories can proven and dismissed, but "dismissed because I know this isn't true from the latest source material" kind of miss the entire point of this thread.

I think you know this already, but in Animesuki, when a speculation involves future spoilers for source material reader, it will usually say so in the thread title "Spoilers & Speculation". There, you can be as "productive" as you want with no spoilers restriction. Request one if there isn't one already.

==========================

I also adhere to the theory that this is both the game world and an alternate world. It's an alternate world that was specifically created, by some super sentient being(s) (thus essentially, programmed). I don't think it's possible for all the intricate game rules to be there without someone intentionally implementing them, so I think there must be a grand designer. But I also don't think humans are capable of this (if there is human culprit, then he's a mere pawn), so it must be some form of advanced civilization. Think of it like the 4D people in Star Ocean.

I don't think the existence of a Deus Ex Machina designer is more of an asspull than "magic did it" in this case. For all we know this designer might be Mamarethe God of Magic himself and that the existence of magic hinted at his existence.

[Tenzen12]

Debate=Discussion>>Goal to reach correct conclussion. Discussion for sake of discussion is waste of time. It can entertaining sometimes but that's all.

As I said this is thread "Theories and Speculations" means we discuss theories and (suprisingly) speculation in order to either prove or dismiss them. If spoilers can do that it would spare us lot of time and energy.

And due fact that novel thread is spoiler free I don't have realy need ask for new one. But people who want find answers about this world will definitely doesn't find here. Which beats very purpose of this thread.

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by GundamFan

I don't see any holes all at if the Landers are actually sentient AI in some VR world it would make sense that some sort of world history would be written and a version of it would have been included in the AI memory program probably would even vary based on things race,social status, and role.

Because according to hamazura's theory, it means the history was being written at the time of the game's creation, which would make it weird no player, much less a hardcore player like Shiroe who even recognized someone from flavor text, ever heard of what should have been a core aspect of the game's lore. This is a story that never existed in the game, but is very real now.

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

No. If you add in future spoilers, at that point, it ceases to be "speculation". The thrill of speculation is in NOT knowing whether you or anyone else is right.
You can have everyone being wrong about all the theories but it can still be a productive speculation thread.

Not even novel readers know the final answer yet. Speculation is still ongoing there, just with many, many more theories and evidence being thrown around.

[Moridin]

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

And human brain contain around 100 billions neurons and we talking likely about millions landers in whole world. And let's not forget that they act EXACTLY like humans with culture and unique temperaments.

Even if computers become so much advanced it would handle this much, human psychology is different metter (though I do know about these telephone experiments). In the end it is implasauble.

I'm going to make some guesses here now.

1. I'm guessing that Landers don't have a moving and functional inside, like intestines and lungs and such. Instead they could have "status effects" etc, that would mimic all the things a living human could experience.

2. I'm also guessing that the Elder tale programmers did not start with single celled organisms and let them evolve into Landers.

3. I'm also guessing that the Landers are not EXACLTY like us, instead they appear EXACTLY like us by simulating humanity indiscernibly.

if (1) applies throughout the body it lets us take away half the neurons, easily. (2) then lets us take away all the things left behind by evolution. It is hard to determin what is really needed for humans, what is the needed to make us behave as a human in every situation. With (3) in mind, maybe many of those situations can be approximated without it being noticable to an observer? I'd say that (2) lets us take away atleast half of the neurons once again. Depending on the amount of freedom the psyche of the NPCs have (3) could cut away a large chunk. I mean, does it really exist a Lander that gets turned on by baby horses and loves scat sex? We could easily cut away 99% and the Landers would still have the personalities of everyone the average human has ever meet.

That leaves us with 10^11 x 0,5 x 0,5 x 0,01 = 250 million neurons.

With calculations, you could avoid using floats and doubles when programming and instead using only integers. An Int takes 4 bytes. Each Neuron would require atleast 3 Ints, possibly many more. Each connection between neurons would require 2 Ints. There is atleast 10 times the amount of active connections as there are neurons.

That is:
4 x 3 x 250 000 000 = 3 billion bytes, just for the Neurons.
And 4 x 2 x 10 x 250 000 000 = 20 billion bytes for the connections.
That is a total of 23 billion bytes, which is 23 gigabytes per person.
Lets say that there are 10 million Landers, and that the rest of the creatures have a simpler AI, that is about 300 million GB, 230 million GB for all the sentient beings, 70 million GB for the rest.

Blizzard used 1,3 petabytes for its storage in 2009 (4). That is 1,3 million GB. That was enough for them, but they could have easily expanded it, they simply did not need more.

The "space per cost" is doubled about every 14 months (5). In 2009 there where:
((2018 - 2009) x 12) / 14 = about 8 such space duplications left until the year 2018. Thus a company could easily own:
1,3 million GB x 2^8 = 332 million GB by the year 2018. Which means that Elder Tales developers could easily have 110% of the memory required.

Lets say that I was wrong somewhere along my guesses. If the devs really needed more memory and made that a priority they could have had 10 times as much. Although, my guesses where catious and I think it is more probable that I have erred on the side of caution.



(4) http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/a...s-75000-cores/
(5) http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte

[Tenzen12]

Originally Posted by Moridin

I'm going to make some guesses here now.

1. I'm guessing that Landers don't have a moving and functional inside, like intestines and lungs and such. Instead they could have "status effects" etc, that would mimic all the things a living human could experience.

2. I'm also guessing that the Elder tale programmers did not start with single celled organisms and let them evolve into Landers.

3. I'm also guessing that the Landers are not EXACLTY like us, instead they appear EXACTLY like us by simulating humanity indiscernibly.

if (1) applies throughout the body it lets us take away half the neurons, easily. (2) then lets us take away all the things left behind by evolution. It is hard to determin what is really needed for humans, what is the needed to make us behave as a human in every situation. With (3) in mind, maybe many of those situations can be approximated without it being noticable to an observer? I'd say that (2) lets us take away atleast half of the neurons once again. Depending on the amount of freedom the psyche of the NPCs have (3) could cut away a large chunk. I mean, does it really exist a Lander that gets turned on by baby horses and loves scat sex? We could easily cut away 99% and the Landers would still have the personalities of everyone the average human has ever meet.

1) You know that in novels when you kill animal, adventurer or lander it's quite naturalistic, don't you? NHK decided for more MMORPG approach but it's safe assume landers does has fully functional inners. Also you should take notice that they are able recognise taste wich was completely useless ability until adventurers invented how to cook real dishes and would be most logicaly cutten off.

2)As you yourself said, it's hard to determine what is really needed for humans and what make us behive as a human in every situation and that means it's hard simmulate perfectly. Which amounts of landers and adventurers and with growing interactions between them it's clear it would just metter of time before adventurers realise natives are off. Which didn't happen despite of many players actualy deliberate examined them and others who became very close friends (Crusty, Soujiro ect...).

[Alf]

Originally Posted by Moridin

Actually it is not highly implausible, at the rate of which computer memory increase in size, it could be simple around 2020ish. Elder Tale could have started with poor AI back in 1998, and then closer to 2018 there could have been a patch.

I have seen about a hundred simulated flying things flying towards their target, and about 20 simulated cars driving around a race track. Both the fliers and cars were controlled by small sets of Artificial Neural Nets (ANN) and both groups had thaught themselfs everything. The simulations only contained rules for physics and such, and what was considered the "goal". This was years ago.
I have made a program that learns to play Tic Tac Toe. Its ANN contained less than 100 neurons and I used to run about a thousand of those simultaneously. Again, this was years ago.

If you had a sufficiently large group of ANNs, with the same amount of Neurons as a human brain, enough training and the same sets of input as a human brain, there would exist one that have the same exact thought (yes, Thought) as you do when you are both exposed to the same stimulus.

Somewhere between these two extremes you would get an ANN that would be selfaware.

There are just too many Landers to simulate. I don't recall exactly how many Landers are there, but it would be safe to take at least 1:10 ratio, that would be at least 300,000 of them for Yamato server alone. That would be by far too many to simulate indistinglishable AI. Also, the memories of Landers cannot be simply scribed, but need to be learned. Interaction between Landers also need to be taken into account. So you cannot simpify the simulation. It just take too much trouble as a setting to make that up.

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

Debate=Discussion>>Goal to reach correct conclussion. Discussion for sake of discussion is waste of time. It can entertaining sometimes but that's all.

As I said this is thread "Theories and Speculations" means we discuss theories and (suprisingly) speculation in order to either prove or dismiss them. If spoilers can do that it would spare us lot of time and energy.

And due fact that novel thread is spoiler free I don't have realy need ask for new one. But people who want find answers about this world will definitely doesn't find here. Which beats very purpose of this thread.

Please don't take the fun out of anime only audience. I'm a novel reader myself, but I don't think spreading spoilers to anime audience just to spare the time and energy isn't anything productive. Let them experience the process of gaining knowledge progressively and slowly hammering out implausable theories is fun. THAT is the point this thead.

And as a novel reader, discussion under limited information is also fun. But you need to allow wrong things, and allow different ideas and possibilities to flourish out of discussion.

[Moridin]

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

1) You know that in novels when you kill animal, adventurer or lander it's quite naturalistic, don't you? NHK decided for more MMORPG approach but it's safe assume landers does has fully functional inners. Also you should take notice that they are able recognise taste wich was completely useless ability until adventurers invented how to cook real dishes and would be most logicaly cutten off.

2)As you yourself said, it's hard to determine what is really needed for humans and what make us behive as a human in every situation and that means it's hard simmulate perfectly. Which amounts of landers and adventurers and with growing interactions between them it's clear it would just metter of time before adventurers realise natives are off. Which didn't happen despite of many players actualy deliberate examined them and others who became very close friends (Crusty, Soujiro ect...).

regarding 1) Actually, I have not read the novels, so I did not know that is was simmilar to nature. I still doubt that they have moving organs though, or hormon secreting systems, intrinsic nervous system, Sympatic or Parasympatic nervous systems, etc. All of which could be emulated instead as "status effects" instead of having actual systems for it.

I agree that the taste systems would logically not be present in the Landers. The only work around I can think of would be that each ingredient could have its own "effect". That would be alot simpler than having AIs capable of taste via the tounge and nervous system. But it would also mean that the even the players would have to use this system. If its well made the tastes perceived could be indistinguishable from the real ones while at the same time not need any, or only a small amount, brain power to be experienced.

2) I don't think that that is a problem. The most extreme kinds of output are the ones that require a large Neural Network. The standard outputs require verry little. For personalities, even with only 1% of the total amount or neurons you should still be able to get most of your psychos and serial killers.

Then, I have shown that the AI itself is not implausible to exist by 2018, it might still be improbable though. And I have also clearly demonstrated that the memory requirements of having 10 million Landers, each with it's own advanced AI, and a fully simulated world is easily obtainable. This is true even if I am wrong by a factor of ten on the memory requirments.

Will be a while untill my next respons. It's half past three in the morning here lol!

[Moridin]

Originally Posted by Alf

There are just too many Landers to simulate. I don't recall exactly how many Landers are there, but it would be safe to take at least 1:10 ratio, that would be at least 300,000 of them for Yamato server alone. That would be by far too many to simulate indistinglishable AI.

Read my other posts... I have calculated with 10 million Landers, and it sill works.

Originally Posted by Alf

Also, the memories of Landers cannot be simply scribed, but need to be learned. Interaction between Landers also need to be taken into account.

Artificial Neural Networks are like a brain. There won't be a requirement for memory for the landers personal memories. The memories are inside the Neural Network, built in to it while it adapts. The network learns from events.

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by Moridin

Sometime ago, in Shiroe's real world, when the programers of Elder Tale first started their world they created an actual universe. Much like our big bang, it all sprang into existance in the tiniest fraction of time, out of nothing.

Except the timelines for that don't mesh up. The beta for Elder Tales started in 1998, or 240 years ago in game time...but we were told about events that happened centuries before that, which would have chronologically been been during the late 1980's. Elder Tales the MMORPG couldn't have started it's development existence then. That's not even dealing with the fact that 350 years ago was when civilization on Elder Tales was at its peak. A civilization needed to have been gradually built up over the centuries.


The world of Elder Tales chronologically seems to have existed prior to when the Elder Tales MMORPG was developed. The development of the MMORPG game only seems to coincide with MMORPG elements starting to appear in the world.

[Alf]

Originally Posted by Moridin

Read my other posts... I have calculated with 10 million Landers, and it sill works.

I take it you don't know alot about Artificail Neural Networks. They are like a brain. There won't be a requirement for memory for the landers personal memories. The memories are inside the Neural Network, built in to it while it adapts. The network learns from events.

Well, I don't know a lot about Artificail Neural Networks, but I do know that it needs to be trained by events. Anyway, since I'm not familiar with that area, perhaps I'll need to borrow your knowledge for this discussion.

Your calculation is based on the assumption that neurons for each Lander can be approximated. However, there is no way to prevent players from interacting with Landers randomly. In the case of close interaction like Krusty and Princess Renessia, I assume that she requires more complex network. Is it possible to build up a more complex network for the princess on the fly, when Krusty suddenly decided to keep her close? And what about the case of other nobles in the conference?

And, what would be the processing power requirement for such interaction? since the system is interfacing with about 30 thousand players on Yamato server alone, is it possible to be done in real time, or 12 times speed of real time?

Before Catastrophe, NPC are not individually identifiable, but now as Landers they are, and with human like behavior. That's a big leap, and it means if Landers are AI driven then the neural networks only started working at Catastrophe. Neural networks can be trained but is it possible that the resulting society can be tuned to current state as a stable system?